


Here There Be Dragons

by whatarubberchicken



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Kidge - Freeform, Set during season 8, forest fire, or after season 7 if season 8 doesn't exist for you, using the training deck for fun and flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24728269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatarubberchicken/pseuds/whatarubberchicken
Summary: In Keith’s opinion, one of the best things about the Atlas was the return of an Altean-style training deck.Having Pidge around can make it even better.
Relationships: Keith/Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 10
Kudos: 104





	Here There Be Dragons

In Keith’s opinion, one of the best things about the Atlas was the return of an Altean-style training deck. Sam Holt had even combined it with Earth’s simulator system, making it so they could train with actual terrain to consider!

It also allowed for some… more imaginative missions.

“Dragons,” Pidge said flatly, giving him a deadpan stare. “You want me to program the training deck with a simulation that’ll let you fight **_dragons_**?!”

Keith nodded eagerly, giving her what he hoped was a good impression of puppy dog eyes. (Lance had apparently mastered the technique, but he refused to share his secret, the traitor.)

Pidge’s eye twitched. “Stop that,” she ordered. “It looks freaky when you do that!”

Keith pouted.

“Ugh, fine, I’ll do it,” she grumbled, already opening her laptop. Keith resisted the urge to cheer and settled for a quick fist pump.

“Do you want me to program you fighting in Black, Red, or one of the MFEs…?” she trailed off when Keith sheepishly pointed to his Marmoran Blade. He swore her eye twitched again.

“You want to _swordfight_ the dragons—of course you do!” Pidge sighed.

* * *

Keith knew that he was not supposed to be bugging Pidge while she worked on the code for his program. But she had commandeered some very interesting robots to be the bodies behind his dragons (his sword needed something to hit, after all!) and she was doing some sort of program where the floor of the training deck actually moved! Oh, he couldn’t wait to see what she’d come up with! She’d been working for hours! Surely, she was almost done….

“Not so close,” she grumbled as he crowded into her personal space to get a better look. Was she designing some sort of tower?

“Is it almost done?” he asked eagerly. _It looked like most of it was done!_

“Just about,” she said, pushing him back again. “I just need to—OUCH!”

“Sorry,” he said. He’d accidentally bumped into her, making her lurch forward. In fact, he was pretty sure she’d accidentally pressed some buttons….

“Oh, quiznak!” Pidge yelped as the room around them started to beep and whirr. “Oh, no nononono—” The computer monitors and keypads folded seamlessly into the floor, just like when— “You just pressed the start button! I WASN’T READY TO STA—AHHHHHHH!!”

“Pidge!”

Keith stumbled back as the floor around Pidge suddenly shot into the air, taking the screaming girl with it. He backed up to see how high it was going.

_A raised platform? Why would Pidge include a raised platform?_

The simulator kicked in, covering the surfaces of the room in the programmed terrain. Keith gaped as he was suddenly in the middle of a sunny meadow, right next to a tall stone tower. They were surrounded by trees, and in the distance, he could even see what looked like mountain ranges!

The rushing of water caught his attention and he looked over to the side to see a river take form between them and the tree line.

_Awesome! Pidge really had gone all out on this!_

“Pidge, this is amazing!” he yelled, hoping she could hear him from the top of the “tower.” Sure enough, he heard her let loose a string of swear words that would make her mother ground her for a week. He laughed and opened his mouth to tease her when a new sound distracted him.

A roar shook the area.

Keith spun around. _The dragons! The dragons were active!_

Sure enough, right where the pile of robots had been laying, a blue dragon was now raising its head and narrowing its yellow eyes at him. It was long and lithe, and reminded him of the Chinese water dragons from Earth’s legends.

And somehow, it kinda looked like Lance.

He grinned and reached for his sword.

* * *

Keith whooped and leapt over a pile of debris, barely dodging a jet of fire on his left. He turned just in time to catch the dragon’s teeth with the blade of his sword and grunted with the effort of forcing it back.

Best. Simulation. Ever.

Good sims could make you feel hot when you were close to “fire.” Good gladiators made you work for every inch of space on the training deck.

This program did BOTH.

“You’re the best, Pidge!” he yelled, fending off another set of claws and teeth. Behind him, high in the “tower,” Pidge screamed something back. He couldn’t quite hear her over the dragon’s roars, but he could imagine her snarky comeback.

“Couldn’t quite hear you, oh, princess in the tower,” he called teasingly, kicking the dragon away again to give himself time to look up at the tower.

Pidge’s head peeked out. “I SAID, I would throw a rock at you, but I can’t, because once anything is separated from this tower, the program thinks it’s ‘destroyed’ and vaporizes it BEFORE IT GETS TO YOUR FAT HEAD!” she yelled.

“Sounds like a programming error!” he laughed, beating back a quick, little green dragon. Pidge snarled something back, but it was lost in the roar of dragon fire.

So far, he’d had several types of dragons attack him. The blue one had indeed been a water dragon, and it had shot ice at him while trying to drive him towards the river (which he had carefully avoided). The red one breathed fire and had been particularly difficult to get away from when it started using its tail to duel his sword. Then there had been a huge black dragon that tried to blow him away with its wings, and these little green ones that loved to swarm him at all the wrong moments. He’d even fought a pink one that tried to catch him with its thin, long tongue.

Keith owed Pidge big time.

He hadn’t spotted a yellow one yet, but he was pretty sure he’d seen specs for a pale dragon with a drill for a tail. He was looking forward to that.

All the dragons were quick and strong, and he’d had to use different tactics to defeat each one—in short, Keith was having the time of his life! He was, however, starting to get tired. Plus, he wanted to give Pidge a review of the program so far, so…

“End training sequence!” he called, dropping his guard. He barely got his sword back up in time to block the claws that kept coming at him.

“What the—END TRAINING SEQUENCE!” he yelled again. “END SIMULATION! END SIMULATION!!” Memories of a gladiator that _just wouldn’t stop_ flashed through his mind.

“That won’t work, genius,” Pidge’s voice drawled from the tower.

“What? Pidge!” Keith squawked, dodging another fire blast. He now had three dragons pressing him against the walls of her tower.

“You bumped into me before I could finish programming this thing, remember?” she yelled back. “THAT INCLUDES THE CODING FOR EMERGENCY STOPS!!”

“So, it’s just never gonna stop?!” he exclaimed, fully panicking now. The big black dragon was pulling itself back onto its feet, despite the wound he’d given it earlier. It should be dead!

“You have to finish the program!”

“HOW?!”

“RESCUE THE QUIZNAKING PRINCESS!” she screamed, pointing at herself. “Climb the freaking tower and rescue the princess! Like I’ve been telling you to do since we started this thing!”

“Oh.”

In his defense, he hadn’t really been paying attention to what Pidge had been yelling at him in the beginning. He been having a LOT of fun fighting the dragons. Especially the big, black one. But he didn’t think he was up for another round. And if rescuing the princess was all it took….

He glanced behind himself, judging the distance to the window of the tower where Pidge’s head was sticking out. It was just a little too high….

The big, black dragon dove at him, intending to snap him up and eat him.

_Perfect._

Keith jumped up at the last second, vaulting onto its head and using it to springboard halfway up the tower. From there, he had enough momentum to run straight up the wall—a skill he’d learned during his first year with the Blades. He leapt up to the window, startling Pidge, who squawked and stumbled back. He smirked at her flustered state from where he crouched on the windowsill.

“My lady,” he said, giving her a little mocking bow. To his surprise, she squeaked again and grabbed his arm, hauling him into the room—just before the dragon’s claws dug into the windowsill he’d been crouched on. The dragon itself was too big to fit inside the window, but it clawed and roared at them in frustration.

“Thanks,” Keith said shakily, dodging a jet of fire before the dragon overbalanced and fell backwards. That gave them a few moments to calm down.

He looked around the room. Pretty standard “top of the highest tower” room: a bed, dresser, sewing stuff, decorations, etc. It looked like a typical girl’s room. (You know, if they were a medieval princess.) Though, now that he was looking, the room looked trashed. The vanity mirror was broken, and many objects that should’ve been there weren’t there anymore, such as the stool and the sheets on the bed.

“What happened here?” he asked, pretty sure he knew the answer.

“I tried to escape,” Pidge grumbled, throwing a wooden jewelry box at the dragon who had come back and was clawing at the windowsill. The box shattered into pixels before it had even gotten halfway across the room. The dragon roared at her. “There’s no door or stairway to get down, so I tried to rip the bedsheets to make a rope ladder and climb down, but they dissolved, just like everything that gets ‘destroyed.’”

“What about the stool?” Keith asked, gesturing to the vanity with no place to sit. She shot a pointed glare at him.

_Right. His fat head._ He’d wondered why she’d been screaming at him so much.

“So, why hasn’t the simulation ended yet?” he asked, fishing for another topic. “I’m here, so you’re saved, princess.” He grinned at her.

“That’s not how it works,” she groaned.

“Why? Because of all the dragons?” Keith asked, pulling her away from the pink dragon’s long tongue that had snaked in after her. He sliced it off with his sword and the dragon howled. Still, none of them, not even the little green ones, could fit through the window. “They can’t get in here.”

“Are you sure about that, hotshot?”

“So… wait, I gotta defeat _all_ the dragons?!” Keith exclaimed, remembering how the big, black one had respawned.

“No, the program will keep producing dragons until you finish the simulation.”

“Well, how do I do that?” he asked, exasperated. He whirled to face her. _She was being uncharacteristically coy with her information here!_ To his surprise, Pidge was blushing.

“I—I wasn’t done,” she sputtered, twiddling her fingers together in a way that told him she was very nervous. “I wasn’t done with the programming!”

“I know that,” Keith yelled, dodging another flame from a dragon at the window. “I’m sorry, all right?! I didn’t mean to make you push the start button!”

“There was a whole aspect of the program I hadn’t written yet… and it included how you end the training simulation!”

“Oh my God, Pidge,” Keith cried, stabbing yet another dragon that came at them through the window. All the clawing had actually made the hole at the window frighteningly bigger; he wasn’t sure how long they were gonna last up here. “Are we trapped in this simulation?! Please tell me we’re not trapped in here!”

“No, no, we’re not! We just—we just have to—” No doubt about it, Pidge was flushing bright red. It was actually kinda cute… but Keith had no patience left.

“WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO?!”

“KISS!” Pidge blurted, covering her face with her hands.

Keith hacked a talon off the newest dragon attempting to barbeque them and kicked it away from the window. Then, and only then, did he process what she’d just said.

He whirled on her. “We have to WHAT?!”

“I’m sorry!” she whimpered. “It was a joke—I wanted to embarrass you and I thought Lance would get a kick out of you having to kiss a princess—but then _you_ had to go make me push that damn button before I could make the princess robot’s character specs—”

“So, who do I have to kiss?!” he demanded.

Pidge pointed at herself.

“I programmed the sim to evolve around the situation mid-fight,” she whispered sheepishly. “That’s how the dragons are able to react to your fighting style and give you more of a challenge. But, without the princess character, and with me in the room without a viable weapon, the program must’ve assumed that my specs were the missing data and assigned me to the princess role. That’s why the dragons aren’t attacking me, and why I was put up here in the tower.”

He gaped at her for a minute, part of him unable to believe his luck, and the other part noting just how cute Pidge was when she was so embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry—” Pidge cut herself off with a gasp, looking behind Keith towards the window. Her face went pale. There was a tell-tale growling and scraping noises and Keith didn’t need to glance back to realize that the dragons had finally clawed their way in. He called his sword to its full length, spun around, and threw the blade down the monster’s throat before it could breathe fire on them.

The dragon burst into a million pixels, the bot behind it falling from the tower along with Keith’s sword.

“Did you just _throw_ your only weapon?!” Pidge shrieked. “Keith, there’s going to be more of them! They—”

She was cut off as Keith strode across the room, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her hard and fast. She froze and he took the opportunity to run his fingers through her hair and press her firmly against himself. She was just starting to relax against him and return the kiss when….

“SIMULATION COMPLETE. CONGRATULATIONS!” the computerized voice declared.

All around them, the tower dissolved into the simple, raised platform it really was. They had a great view of the destruction Keith and the dragons had wreaked on the room before the platform finally began to descend until it locked back into place with the rest of the floor. Keith kinda felt bad for whoever was on cleanup duty this week… _nah_. He grinned at Pidge, but it turned sheepish when he realized he still had his arms around her. He quickly let her go.

“So, I have some notes….”

Pidge sputtered indignantly. “ _You—_ you have _notes_?! WHAT WAS _THAT?!”_

“You definitely need to add the emergency stop, but I dunno if I need a ‘rescue the princess’ element,” he mused, gleefully ignoring her as he backed away. Her face was an interesting mix of humiliation and rage. “Of course, if you just wanna join me again, I understand, and I promise I’ll kiss you better next time….”

“You are completely missing the point! KEITH!! HEY, GET BACK HERE!”


End file.
